"When Do We Get a New Daddy?"

A few weeks after Robert died, I was driving to my sister's house with Emmy in the backseat. She was five. The radio was playing as she gazed out the window, not really saying much.

The trip to Kami's took about an hour, and after a long silence, she piped up from the backseat: "So… when do we get a new daddy?"

I nearly drove off the road.

There are moments in parenting where time slows down and your brain scrambles to catch up with what just came out of your child's mouth. This was one of them. I remember gripping the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, and thinking, Well… that's a question I wasn't prepared for today. Or ever.

Five-year-olds understand the world in very practical terms. If something important is missing, the natural assumption is that it will be replaced. You lose a shoe, you get another one. The goldfish dies, you go to the pet store. A dad feels like a pretty big missing piece, so in her mind, the next logical step was obvious.

I took a breath and answered her as simply as I could. "We're not getting a new daddy. You had one daddy, and he loved you very much."

That was enough for the moment. She didn't press. She accepted the answer the way children do, then immediately moved on to something else entirely.

Kids can ask a question that takes the air out of your lungs, then turn around thirty seconds later and debate which Backstreet Boys song is superior. The emotional whiplash is startling.

Over time, the questions kept coming, just spaced out and shaped by whatever she was thinking about that day. "Where is he now?" "Can he see us?" "Why did he die?" "Are you going to die too?" "Can we get a dog?"

Okay, I made that last one up… she is a cat person, through and through.

But seriously, each question deserved a real answer, even when I had to fight my way through it. I learned to keep it simple and clear. No vague phrases that could confuse her. No "he went to sleep" or "we lost him," because children take words at face value, and the last thing I needed was a five-year-old terrified to go to bed or convinced I might wander off at Target and never come back.

I told her the truth in pieces she could understand. "His body stopped working." "He can't come back." "No, we can't call him."

That last one came up more than once. She wanted to call him. She wanted to know if he'd be home by Christmas. She asked if he was coming for her birthday. Each question hit me a little differently, like stepping on the same bruise from a new angle.

You don't explain death once to a child and move on; you explain it over and over, as their understanding grows and shifts. The conversation changes as they do. What made sense at five doesn't cut it at seven. What she accepted at seven gets questioned again at ten.

Kids don't need perfect answers, only clear words, room to ask again, and someone in the front seat willing to take a breath, keep driving, and answer the question that just came out of nowhere.

Some days you'll nail it. Some days you'll fumble through an explanation about heaven or bodies or why bad things happen and wonder if you just made it worse. You probably didn't. Kids are more resilient than we give them credit for, and they're also more forgiving when we don't get it exactly right.

The questions will keep coming. From the backseat, from the dinner table, from wherever they happen to be when grief surfaces in their five-year-old, seven-year-old, ten-year-old brain. You won't always have the right answer. You'll answer anyway.

With Grace for the Mess,

~Stef